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Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction - What is it and What Does it Do? - Ep 56
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This episode brings together episodes 53 to 55 as the unexpected finale of a ‘secret miniseries’ on how zooarchaeology can be used to reconstruct palaeoenvironments in conjunction with other archaeological subdisciplines. But how can the presence or absence of a given toad species infer on past environments? Tune in to find out! Case studies feature the humble European pond turtle/terrapin/tortoise and the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of an Upper Pleistocene hyena den in Bois Roche, France.
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/animals/56
Links and Sources
- Betts, M. W., Maschner, H. D., Clark, D. S., Moss, M. L., & Cannon, A. (2011). Zooarchaeology of the “Fish That stops”. Moss, ML and Cannon, A., The Archaeology of North Pacific Fisheries, University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks, 171-195.
- Foden, W. B. et al. (2009). Species susceptibility to climate change impacts. Wildlife in a changing world–an analysis of the 2008 IUCN Red List of threatened species, 77.
- Muniz, F. P., Bissaro-Júnior, M. C., Guilherme, E., Souza-Filho, J. P. D., Negri, F. R., & Hsiou, A. S. (2021). Fossil frogs from the upper Miocene of southwestern Brazilian Amazonia (Solimões Formation, Acre Basin). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 41(6), e2089853.
- Sommerseth, I. (2011). Archaeology and the debate on the transition from reindeer hunting to pastoralism. Rangifer, 31(1), 111-127.
- Sommer, R. S., Persson, A., Wieseke, N., & Fritz, U. (2007). Holocene recolonization and extinction of the pond turtle, Emys orbicularis (L., 1758), in Europe. Quaternary Science Reviews, 26(25-28), 3099-3107.
- Sommer, R. S. et al. (2009). Unexpected early extinction of the European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) in Sweden and climatic impact on its Holocene range. Molecular Ecology, 18(6), 1252-1262.
- Waters, J. M., Fraser, C. I., Maxwell, J. J., & Rawlence, N. J. (2017). Did interaction between human pressure and Little Ice Age drive biological turnover in New Zealand?. Journal of Biogeography, 44(7), 1481-1490.
- Villa, P., Goni, M. F. S., Bescos, G. C., Grün, R., Ajas, A., Pimienta, J. C. G., & Lees, W. (2010). The archaeology and paleoenvironment of an Upper Pleistocene hyena den: an integrated approach. Journal of Archaeological Science, 37(5), 919-935.
- Yeomans, L. (2018). Influence of Global and Local Environmental Change on Migratory Birds: Evidence for Variable Wetland Habitats in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene of the Southern Levant. Journal of Wetland Archaeology, 18(1), 20-34.
- Zuffi, M. A. L.; Celani, A.; Foschi, E.; Tripepi, S. (2007). "Reproductive strategies and body shape in the European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) from contrasting habitats in Italy". Italian Journal of Zoology. 271 (2): 218–224.
Contact
- Alex FitzpatrickTwitter: @archaeologyfitz
- Simona FalangaTwitter: @CrazyBoneLady
- Alex’s Blog: Animal Archaeology
- Music "Coconut - (dyalla remix)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2UiKoouqaY
Affiliates
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Transcript
Introduction to Paleo-Environmental Reconstruction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Archaeo Animals, the podcast all about zirarchaeology. This is episode 56, paleo-environmental reconstruction. What it is and what does it do?
Secret Miniseries Announcement
00:00:27
Speaker
I'm your host, Alfred Patrick, and with me as always, Siobhan
00:00:39
Speaker
So yeah, we are kind of, we kind of led into this topic, but we are talking about pale environmental reconstruction, finally, even though I guess we were kind of hinting at it in the last couple of episodes. I mean, we talked a lot about different animals, you know, from your moist, moist frogs and toads of amphibians to kind of
00:01:01
Speaker
scaly snakes and lizards of reptiles. And finally, in our last episode, we talked about the tiniest little mice involved that make up mammalian microflauna.
00:01:13
Speaker
And that, everyone was all a ploy. Heard it here first. Because I mean, while a lot of the species that we covered in the last few episodes, you know, it was species that were not previously covered, there was a secret reason why we decided to dedicate the entirety of the last few episodes to those specific teensy little species that I like to call the microarchaeology, zoo archaeology, because
00:01:39
Speaker
Surprise! Secret miniseries. Boom. Yeah, it's actually been a secret miniseries for paleo-environmental reconstruction. And boy, am I gonna trip over saying that multiple times in this episode because it's kind of a mouthful. Paleo-environmental reconstruction. Ancient environment. That's what it boils down to, I mean, the paleo environment. So if you hear some
00:02:06
Speaker
Typically tapping, my dog has decided to very clumsily climb on the bench. There you go, welcome. Tell us more about mice and rats.
00:02:19
Speaker
always opinionated
Animal Indicators of Environmental Change
00:02:20
Speaker
that one. But yeah, as we have noted in previous episodes, a lot of the animals we've covered so your amphibians, reptiles, small mammals and birds can be used as an indicator of environmental characteristics and the way they may or may not have changed over time. My dog was proceeding to try and lick the plate of the Nutella wrap I just had and boy, no.
00:02:43
Speaker
So yeah, these kind of indicators are really extremely useful for paleo-environmental reconstruction. But, you know, what exactly is paleo-environmental reconstruction? Now, Simone has kind of alluded to it. Unsurprisingly, it has to do with the past and the past environment. So we can use a variety
00:03:03
Speaker
of evidence from archaeological sites to somewhat accurately kind of sort of reconstruct the past paleo environment of a given site that we're working on. Now, most of the evidence which is useful to paleo environmental reconstruction comes from the environmental evidence or eco facts, which is largely recovered from environmental soil sampling.
00:03:28
Speaker
I mean, as a quick, very quick aside, promise, for those who are not familiar with soil sampling, I mean, it's pretty much in the name as it's a collection of samples of soil from a given archaeological horizon, archaeological features, you know, depending on what kind of, where in the world you practice your archaeology. And the soil samples are then processed for eco-fact and sometimes artefact recovery.
00:03:52
Speaker
And to be honest, it can take a variety of forms, depending on what sort of evidence you're after. So you can do all sorts of fancy geochemical analysis. You can sample specifically to get pollen. But I mean, largely soil sampling is usually, well, just that is sift either dry or with the aid of water.
00:04:10
Speaker
It's so much fun. It's a great workout, actually, if you're sieving, especially when you use those really big sieves, you're just kind of like shaking it back and forth. I've never done the water one, which I've heard is horrible from people. Done it.
00:04:26
Speaker
I mean, it's also quite manually intensive as well. Yeah, and basically this leg day, just a lot of arm day.
Role of Soil Sampling in Eco-Fact Recovery
00:04:34
Speaker
Once you go through the beautiful process of environmental soil sampling and processing, you will get as we mentioned, a variety of eco facts that will range from seeds to grains, mollusks, or the very small animal remains that we've been mentioning.
00:04:50
Speaker
and let's not forget the charcoal which i will use as a as a quick shout out to the archaeobotanists out there that can get a tiny piece of charcoal put it under a microscope and tell you which tree it's come from because that's just wizardly
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and I think in particular, if you're working on British sites, I feel like charcoal kind of all over the place, maybe because I've worked in a lot of like iron age sites. So you get your charcoal at the same time as you're getting lots and lots of iron slag. Yeah, boy, it's a lot of a lot of that coming out of the ground. Not very exciting. Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
of like being able to identify because of course the charcoal like it was it was a tree before because it's been so sort of the structure has been so distorted by also the heating process and still being able to sell oh yeah okay that that came from an oak tree that i just took my hat off to you that's yeah that i
00:05:51
Speaker
I don't actually believe that science. I do think it's some kind of witchcraft because I don't believe that you can do that. I'm sorry. As someone who's seen an archaeological charcoal, there's no way. The first hot take of the episode? My conspiracy theory. I'm sure that's in the bingo somewhere.
00:06:13
Speaker
archaeobotany is not real. That's my conspiracy theory for this episode. And of course, well, we're on the subject of archaeobotany. Well, I'm wildly aware it is not an archaeobotany podcast, but it is something that is very helpful and indeed one of the main indicators, like evidence that we use for paleo-environmental reconstruction. The seeds that you may be able to get from your soil samples, especially of the wild flora,
00:06:38
Speaker
can be quite useful in determining the sort of environment during which the investigative time period may have looked like.
Integration of Archaeobotany and Zooarchaeology
00:06:45
Speaker
So, you know, to make a very sort of broad example, finding water loving plants will suggest a damp environment, which I guess in Britain won't say much, but it gets more specific than that. Yeah, you know, it's interesting as well. I think, you know, we haven't, again, really talked about archaeobotany because it's not really
00:07:06
Speaker
part of our podcast. But I think archaeobotany and zoo archaeology go pretty much hand in hand in a lot of ways. I mean, you know, obviously this paleo-environmental reconstruction stuff, a lot of zoo archaeology goes towards kind of a broader environmental archaeology that would also encompass archaeobotany. So it goes hand in hand more than I think we really talk about it here on this podcast. And, you know, there's there's lots of similarities as far as, you know,
00:07:33
Speaker
how you can find, say, seeds from a site. And identifying those seeds is really interesting because it can help us see the sort of, you know, spread or expansion of certain species in a similar way that we look at migration patterns for fauna. Again, I don't think
Challenges in Identifying Seeds and Grains
00:07:51
Speaker
it exists because it seems very hard. I mean, like, I'm just very specific, a lot of seeds and grains do look
00:07:58
Speaker
very much alike, except like this one small characteristic. And of course, you know, much like a zoo archaeology, in archaeology, you have such a range of species that you're going to have to be well versed in, and being able to identify, you know, much in a way, like a zoo archaeology, we don't just, you know, focus on the one species, we basically, we cover them all, like from the largest of mammals to the smallest of mammal, birds, fish, amphibians,
00:08:25
Speaker
if it's there, you have to analyse. I want to or not. But you gotta. And speaking of things that you've gotta, but you don't wanna unless you're again, very most vulnerable, are mollusks. Because again, mollusks are
00:08:43
Speaker
vital to paleo-environmental reconstruction, as certain mollusks get incredibly particular with regards to the environment they live in, which, same to be honest, down to moistness, shade levels, some have very, very niche habitats. So they can be quite useful, except if you get one of the annoying species, they're for us for up to two metres, and for all you know, it's super intrusive.
00:09:09
Speaker
So yeah, looking right at you. When I find shells, when I excavate, I throw them in a bag and I hope that someone looks at them one day because it won't be me. Again, like half the people that do sort of shell just
00:09:31
Speaker
again, like such a wild like variety of species, many of which looking incredibly similar. So you might have like two species looking very similar where one, you know, it's very specifically tied to one environment while the other one just borrows to to oblivion because it can
00:09:48
Speaker
extremely wild, to be completely honest. And maybe I'm a bit biased to someone who's mostly excavated, you know, coastlines and islands. You kind of find a lot of mollusks. A couple. In fact, the entire shell middens, just the entire context of just shells. It's hard.
00:10:14
Speaker
I mean, like, of course, you know, like, on coastlands, you get that because, you know, they're quite easily accessible, but you get them inland plenty. Unfortunately. But we study none of these things. But again, we thought we'd do a very quick aside because all of these are very important aspects to paleo-environmental reconstruction. And then from there, you wish, I don't know, is there an Arceobotany podcast out there? If there isn't, there should be. Just saying. I mean, we could do it. We just don't know anything about it.
00:10:46
Speaker
we might do a disservice to archeobotomy. I mean, one could argue we're doing a disservice to archaeology sometimes. But yes, we don't study any of these sort of very fascinating sort of archaeology fields in their own right. So here we're going to be telling you more about how animal remains can also aid and form like another piece of the puzzle in paleo environmental reconstruction.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's the important thing is to kind of see it like, it's funny, because archaeology is like puzzles within puzzles, you obviously have, you know, we're, all of these things are trying to fill in the gaps and kind of fill out the narrative of the past in the broader archaeological record, but then you can get so specific. And that's why I do really like archaeology is I, it's,
00:11:36
Speaker
Funny because you can work at the big picture level at the same time as you can't work an extremely neat level as well. And I think that's fascinating and very interesting. And there's just so many ways that you can kind of do it. So it's interesting to see zoo archaeology as kind of the broader piece of archaeology, you know, what animals live to hear, what do they do with these animals, blah, blah, blah. But then putting it into another puzzle that's more about, well, what's like the broader environment like?
00:12:04
Speaker
in this time, in this area. It's fun, I guess, sometimes. I guess on that note, we might take a little break before we dive into some more zookeology and how that aids pale environmental reconstruction.
00:12:19
Speaker
And we are back with archaeo-animals. We're talking about paleo-environmental reconstruction today. And, well, we spent the first segment talking about what it all is and, you know, all the various sub-disciplines that come together like a big puzzle to reconstruct past environments. So now let's talk more specifically about the stuff we kind of know a bit more about and talk about how the archaeology fits into all this.
00:12:45
Speaker
Right, so as we discussed earlier and hinted at in all the previous episodes of this secret miniseries, different animals, the favourite kind of miniseries, it's the secret that the miniseries you don't see coming. But yes, so in different animal species, mammalian, avian, amphibian or reptile, we're allowed to prefer certain habitats over others. I mean, who doesn't? With some species preferring like fairly niche ones like that.
00:13:15
Speaker
So therefore, looking at the habitat ranges and preferences of a given species today, and of course, presuming that would have been the same 10,000 years ago, which if their biologists remain the same, more or less, you know, likely, it can inform the paleo environment that we're trying to reconstruct based on their presence, or indeed, their absence. So what we've done here is that we've put together some examples of species and the sort of environments you may find them in, including a few that are quite habitat susceptible.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah so obviously we have talked about some of these but they're just a bit more examples so say amphibians we have a whole episode you can go back and listen to it if you haven't already yet. Now we again we've talked about this in the episode but just to recap their proximity to water is obviously what kind of makes them a
00:14:02
Speaker
pretty useful indicator for a paleo-mental reconstruction. And let's be honest though, that's not the most groundbreaking thing in England. In fact, it's probably a fair guess. You could probably just make that assumption without looking at amphibian remains. What can you tell us about this English field? It's damp. What about it 2,000 years ago? It's damp.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, I guess realistically the opposite would be a bit more groundbreaking at this point. We found this microclimate in the northwest of England that was actually like a very sort of dry Mediterranean landscape. I'm moving there. For an example that's not British though, there have been fossilized remains and the Suriname. Suriname? Suriname.
00:14:59
Speaker
PIPA species. Yes. PIPA is Italian for pipe, so this is okay. Interesting. And the BEAT. Renella species. Codes found in the Amazon rainforest, which have been used to develop paleo-environmental reconstructions of the region during the Upper Miocene due to their very different behaviors relating to water.
00:15:23
Speaker
So the Surinami toads are actually found mostly near kind of stagnant bodies of water, while the beak toads are actually less dependent on watery habitats to survive. So very contrasting species, but depending on where they were found and what context they were found, you know, temporal context they were found, researchers have been able to kind of get a better idea of the kind of
00:15:52
Speaker
changes in climate, the Amazon rainforest has gone through in the past. Which is really interesting and also it's just interesting to find a toad that's not really that dependent on water. Yeah and also it is interesting for us to once again break out of our British shells. I'm trying, I'm just I'm trying as best as I can let me tell you.
00:16:14
Speaker
onto, you know, for a change of that and getting on to, again, some more groundbreaking stuff. We have rodents. So we have like, one of the most common, at least in Britain being field voles, bicrotus sagrestis, which tend to like open field or hedges, which
00:16:32
Speaker
The same goes for many mouse species and it's sort of a similar story for the harvest mouse, Micramis minutus, because you know there's about, at least in Britain, like three species of mouse, like the house mouse, the wood mouse and the harvest mouse. But again, finding species that thrive in open fields and hedges, probably not exactly groundbreaking.
00:16:52
Speaker
as far as Britain is concerned. However, say that you had a site in what is now a forest. I mean, very unlikely most of archaeology in Britain is developer led a lot of the trees are protected. Let's say that you have an archaeological site in the middle of a forest, and you find a lot of species that associate more associated with open fields.
00:17:14
Speaker
say, okay, that maybe sort of that woodland might be a little bit later, it might be established in the medieval period, but it actually used to be open fields beforehand. So I mean, while we do tend to associate, you know, with Britain as sort of vastly open fields, the landscape has changed fairly dramatically for like great deforestation events that are taking place in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age and the Romans came about and before they carry out some more deforestation. Yes, and then you have the establishment of medieval woodlands, but also some deforestation, and just the cycle goes on.
00:17:44
Speaker
I mean but the landscape has been altered a fair amount and of course you're with the enclosure act like the shape of the fields and some of the hedgerows have also like changed a fair amount but still plenty of field balls about.
00:17:58
Speaker
But yeah, it's interesting as well because, you know, it sounds like that's, you know, not a big deal. OK, there used to be trees, now there's not. But obviously there's so many kind of activities, human-led activities, obviously, but also species dependent kind of changes that happen depending on what's a pretty big shift in landscape. And that obviously really alters the archaeological context around these
00:18:21
Speaker
sites in these regions. So it's actually, even though it may seem a bit, you know, oh, who cares? It actually is extremely important to kind of get this detail, especially when you think about, you know, how much of a site we don't get in material remains that can be determined through stuff like this.
00:18:40
Speaker
I mean, absolutely. And he does have a knock on effect at the more or say macro level macro level more in a way like moving away from the small like field volume and harvest mouse remains that will sort of the more macro level of your archaeological site. Because even in terms of livestock, the kind of environment that the settlement is in will also determine which kind of livestock is kept.
Impact of Environment on Livestock Choices
00:19:03
Speaker
So even though you do find your cows, your sheep and pigs sort of pretty much throughout,
00:19:08
Speaker
cattle and pig over sheep are more suited or can thrive in woodland habitats, sheep not so much. And depending on how the landscape has changed over time, if it wasn't as much of pasture, it was more rugged terrain.
00:19:26
Speaker
goats would have been more suited as opposed to sheep. So it does have an impact even on your common domesticates that you may or may not find and why on this particular site they preferred cattle over pig, because that wouldn't necessarily be the only reason there's a number of variables at play, but the kind of environment they have to play with may have also had an impact on which choice of domesticates to keep.
00:19:49
Speaker
Moving a bit above, literally, field voles, migratory birds. So, migration ranges, which we kind of talked about in this episode, they may have changed over time as the climate shifted. So, for example, various species of waterfowl from the Anatidae. I never know how to say that.
00:20:10
Speaker
Anakide? Yes, I did very poorly in Latin. Ducks. The ducks, the ducks, the ducks. They were found in late Pleistocene slash early Holocene contexts in Jordan, and have actually shed further light on climate changes that may have caused the kind of wetland environment to become a little less inviting to migrating birds over time. Also, I don't know about you. There's certain species that make me feel weird when I think about them in the past, and I think ducks are one of them.
00:20:40
Speaker
Okay hot take number two. Why do ducks make you feel weird? I don't know just like saying like oh the ducks from the late Pleistocene like that feels like a wild sentence, you know, but they were wild because I guess that's because this sort of You'd regard them as a common domestic and thinking of like a wild duck out out there in the late Pleistocene, but so bizarre I Have a PhD folks
00:21:13
Speaker
You don't have to be mean, you know that? You don't have to bully. No bullying on this podcast. No one's ever done this on this podcast either.
00:21:32
Speaker
I feel I should mention for people that have just joined us on this particular episode. This is a long running inside joke from almost be tens of episodes ago in which Alex had the realization that there were squirrels in Britain after like six years of living here. I only just got my proper glasses like last year. So just been walking around up and you will see. Leave me alone.
00:22:02
Speaker
I don't know. I'm sorry that my American biases are so strong, okay? Anyway, no, we're just going to talk about how migratory birds remains on your site. They can be pretty cool, right?
00:22:20
Speaker
the computer. Yes, because I mean, it's not this not strictly paleo environmentally related. But you can find, you know, migratory birds at an archaeological site, you know, your usual sort of either summer or winter visitors. The cool thing about it is that, you know, provided the migratory times and ranges have remained the same over time, it gives you an indication of what time of the year the remains were deposited.
00:22:46
Speaker
You know, normally for your remains you get a dating, you know, like late Roman, but what about late Roman in the summer? It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. So yeah, it's not just that though. There are other species that we still have today as well that are still very climate susceptible. So just some examples. Penguins.
00:23:09
Speaker
My favorite animal. Now, modern penguin species are currently considered particularly susceptible to climate change for, you know, kind of obvious reasons. But this was also very true for penguins in the past as well. So, during the Little Ice Age, which was a period of global cooling from 1400 to 700. What about the, what about places in squirrels?
00:23:38
Speaker
This is another one for your bingo parts, ladies and gentlemen.
00:23:45
Speaker
And all those people in between, we have a squirrel appearing on your finger card to mark it off. Thank you. Replaced by the yellow-eyed penguin. Megadictus antipodis. That was expanding. Oh. So. We're going with antipodis, antipodis, antipodis. We're going with antipodis. I will trust you.
00:24:11
Speaker
The white aha of penguin was expanding its habitat more forward. I believe it's a glasses thing, of course. You also thought we had raccoons, we don't actually have raccoons. And eventually, unfortunately, that penguin species wouldn't go extinct, which is this biological turnover.
00:24:29
Speaker
Right, sorry, go back to the Pleisthenesquirrels, I mean ducks. We have the humble cod, ha ha, gaddeds, gaddo species. So fish, like cod, and other gadded species, usually need a very specific temperature range for a successful life cycle, particularly spawning.
00:24:47
Speaker
So as such, the rising sea temperatures associated with climate change are pretty bad news for these fish. Did you see a trend here? For your eyes or before your ears rather, which is also incidentally very quick aside as why zoology can also be very helpful for sort of applied biological sciences, but
00:25:07
Speaker
Aside, over. So, in determining baseline populations from zero archaeological data, archaeologists have been able to see how past climate shifts, for example, the medieval warm period between 950 to 1250 AD, the little ice age that Alex had just discussed. So, these shifts in temperatures have impacted the size of gathered species, increasing during the warmer period and decreasing during the colder one.
00:25:33
Speaker
I mean, as we said, that is true for gadgets of which cods are part, but also just a plethora of other fish species, something we probably don't talk enough because no.
00:25:46
Speaker
And obviously for fish like cod, it's extremely important to kind of understand and know about as this kind of stuff impacts things like fisheries. And I believe the context of which a lot of this research has been done has been done looking at medieval fishing habits and fisheries. And obviously with climate change, that was impacted by the size of gatids, the kind of ability to even take in loads of fish.
00:26:16
Speaker
It's again, as Simona kind of described it earlier, it's a knockdown effect where if you understand kind of the environmental conditions, it can explain a lot of things that were happening in the archaeological record that we can see, or even like, you know, as we get further into the medieval period, the kind of textual record that we may have.
00:26:37
Speaker
Now, we have one last species to talk about, and I think we have talked about reindeer before. Must have done. Yes.
Reindeer Herding and Climate Vulnerability
00:26:45
Speaker
Rangifer tarantus. Because they're a very interesting species as far as not really domesticated. They are herded by the indigenous people up north, the Sami. And so they're very interesting kind of case study of a species that's
00:27:03
Speaker
not really feral, but not necessarily domesticated. Just like semi-domesticated. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about this in episodes, which there are plenty that we talked about domestication, but domestication is necessarily a on and off switch. There are shades of domestication, I guess, different levels of domestication, maybe. But yeah, so reindeer,
00:27:29
Speaker
with populations that are located in the Arctic and the sub-artic regions of the world. Unsurprisingly, very susceptible to the increasingly warming environment up north. Who would have thought? Again, trends, trends, we're talking about. Climate change is bad.
00:27:47
Speaker
Another hot take, apparently. Unfortunately, commentary is bad. And yeah, it's affecting a lot of species. And, you know, I hate to say you don't even have to look at the archaeological record to find out that information. I'll just tell you that right now.
00:28:02
Speaker
a bad and yeah unfortunately I guess we have not learned our lessons as far as climate change overall impacting not just us but lots of other species. Anyway tangent over archaeological research on Sami land use have shown the potential impact of environmental changes on their reindeer herding. Again I believe we've talked about Sami land use and Sami reindeer herding
00:28:29
Speaker
in a previous episode, probably the one one of our where in the world episodes. Don't quote me on that. Probably. But yeah, so there's been, you know, those two historical periods of climate change that we've talked about, because I think they're kind of the main periods of climate change.
00:28:46
Speaker
that historians talk about, the medieval war period and the Little Ice Age, they may have actually impacted grazing for wild reindeer, which along with a couple other factors, including political border formations, may have actually caused the Sami to shift to a new form of nomadic pastoral economy in the mid-1700s.
00:29:06
Speaker
So again, lots of knockdown effects that we're talking about here and how they impact not just one species, but a lot of other species. And unfortunately, time is a flat circle. And a lot of these species we talked about are still climate susceptible. So who knows, I guess maybe.
00:29:23
Speaker
In the hundreds and hundreds of years later, other archaeologists will be able to have very similar stories about species from our time. And on that downer of a note, we will take a break and we will talk about case studies when we come back.
00:29:40
Speaker
And we are back with archaeo-animals. We're talking about paleo-environmental reconstruction, and we are at the case studies. Although this kind of episode really kind of meant that we were just doing loads of mini case studies, you know what I mean? Or also maybe like the whole episode is like one big case study? Because I mean, we covered all the various species or the various orders in the previous episodes, and that's how it all comes together and how you reconstruct the environment.
00:30:08
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Case studies in case studies. Case studiesception. I was going to say if it was like 2011, I'd make that joke. But then you made the joke. Sorry. I live under a rock. Last week I discovered a meme from 10 years ago. Savannah, do you know what year it is?
00:30:37
Speaker
So the motor's just discovered you can get like one megabyte per download, like one megabyte download speed. There's this new thing called broadband. It's very fast. It's faster than the 56k modem I have. I am your same age I will have, you know. Yes, I know. And I'm keeping it up with the memes, so just saying.
00:31:03
Speaker
Well, it just means I got to enjoy it 10 years later. We'll go with that. But yeah, I mean, you know.
00:31:13
Speaker
We can't not have at least a segment that's case studies. And we've got two pretty hefty ones. So our first case study is it's not really a paleo-environmental reconstruction case study. It's kind of more about what we've been talking about, which is how certain species are
00:31:37
Speaker
susceptible to climate and climate change, and how that could be a really useful trait for examining population migrations, extinctions, introductions, loads of things. So enter the European... Now, here's the thing. The European pond... Terrapin? Turtle? Tortoise? Okay. I believe it's a terrapin.
00:32:05
Speaker
I've heard, I, as you know, doing the research this, I have seen all three of those years. I have never been more confused in my life. Oh, put it this way, because turtle, I think it's a purely marine turtle with tortoise being a terrestrial one. I believe our friend here is kind of more of an amphibian, well, not an amphibian. It's a frog?
00:32:35
Speaker
As in, it can be on land for a little bit. It doesn't mind being in water for a little bit. So I would go with a terrapin-like. It's so confusing. Well, it's a turtle that likes to be in the water, but can also climb out of the water, unlike a turtle turtle, which can't go out of the water. And a tortoise that can't really go swimming in the water. But what's its Latin name?
00:33:05
Speaker
Ahhh, it's like Latin roulette here. It's emis orbiculatis.
00:33:12
Speaker
Thank you. But yeah, I mean, just a sneak peek behind the curtain when Simona mentioned this as a potential case study. I had a full blown meltdown trying to figure out what this was because I looked up European pond tortoise. I was like, there's nothing here really. There's a turtle. And then I found a terrapin. I was losing my mind. It was really difficult.
00:33:39
Speaker
I mean, I had a bit of a moment myself in which I was unable to break out on my British shell or carapace, I guess. Because I was focusing with spoilers with this species sort of extinction with regards to Britain and trying to find like materials that would just cover sort of its presence and extinction in Britain, not realizing that the extinction event also went a little bit wider than that. So maybe that was it.
00:34:07
Speaker
Yeah, we were not that special, it turns out. I mean, on one hand, it's a very interesting case study to talk about what, you know, migrations and how we can use these, this climate susceptible kind of features to look at how species may migrate from
00:34:24
Speaker
one region to another eventually on the other hand yeah i was very confused trying to find more information about the british pond turtle which was not british it was european and it's not a turtle it's a terebin exciting exciting the european pond turtle but not turtle turtle
00:34:45
Speaker
Ugh, animals are hard, folks. I don't know if you've gotten that vibe from this podcast yet, but it's really hard sometimes. Anyway, this terrapin is unique in that environmental factors, particularly temperature, strongly impact its development.
Climate Impact on Pond Terrapin Movement
00:35:05
Speaker
with research on more modern populations, which again, spoiler it, it's extinct in some places, not all places, which makes it even more confusing sometimes. But yeah, so research on modern populations of the European pond terrapin indicate that variances in temperature can impact the body size, even the clutch size of turtles or terrapin and their offspring.
00:35:30
Speaker
climate also impacts the survivability rate of juvenile terrapins when they hatch and things like that. In combining some archaeological remains of the pond terrapin,
00:35:44
Speaker
via AD&A and radiocarbon dating with other environmental data, such as temperature comes to mind, researchers such as Robert S. Summer have been able to track the movement of the species throughout the Holocene. So as temperatures rose around the world during the early Holocene, the time was ripe for the expansion of the pond terrapin.
00:36:06
Speaker
moving from glacial regions of the Balkans towards regions such as Britain, Central Europe and Scandinavia. However, fast forward, midway through the Holocene, so about 6,000 years ago, everything was still fine because that was called the Holocene Climatic Optimum, or the Mid-Holocene Warm Period, in which temperatures reached its highest.
00:36:31
Speaker
Unfortunately, that was a very long lift and it started to decline again. This was also where the range upon turtle populations was at its historic maximum.
00:36:44
Speaker
Before they decided actually no we're out of here it's a bit too chilly for my liking so during the schooling period we see the extinction of pond turtles in northern regions such as Scandinavia and Britain and they all moved one or more like the ones are still extant are in southern Europe, North Africa and western parts of Asia where it's a little bit warmer.
00:37:07
Speaker
Folks, could you tell that in our notes for this episode, someone who will remain anonymous wrote turtle? If some folks, if some researchers out there, we'd love to get to like the bottom of if it's a terrapin, a turtle or tortoise, like for sure, please do so and then get back to us so we can rerecord this episode, perhaps.
00:37:37
Speaker
Okay, definition of a terrapin. Oh, that's a good noise. Terrapins are one of several small species of turtle. Oh no!
00:37:53
Speaker
It's not our fault. It's the biologists. That's their fault. I guess it's why they don't form a taxonomic unit per se. I mean, in terms of habitat, they do live in largely freshwater. So in the case of a European pond terrapin, the best way I can describe it is an amphibious turtle, not amphibian of the order of amphibians, but amphibious as an adjective.
00:38:21
Speaker
as in it does stay bluntly in the water, but it climbs on the surface as well, particularly to Sunbathe, which they do love. Big mood. Anyway, yes. We will move away from the taxonomic debate, which is far beyond our actual kind of expertise, I feel like.
00:38:43
Speaker
I just look at the bones. To end the episode, we'll take a look at a very swift difference from a nice and warm climate to cold and dry climate. Spoiler again, we'll look at how Paola Villa and other archaeologists were able to use not just your archaeology, but also other archaeological methods to reconstruct the paleo environment of an upper Pleistocene hyena den located in Bauros, France.
Pleistocene Hyena Den Case Study
00:39:12
Speaker
Fancy.
00:39:13
Speaker
condensation. Quick site background. The site was mixed in terms of evidence you have both human and hyena remains and sort of other species are sort of associated with the former and latter. But let's break down the various methods towards paleo environmental reconstruction that were used here. So you have of course the zoo archaeology to the identification of the microfauna or the macrofauna.
00:39:43
Speaker
That, of course, has helped shaped the broader sort of interpretation of the site as a hyena, then, of course, you have, well, hyena remains, and their prey, such as bobbids, cervids, bison and horse remains also help suggest some environmental characteristics associated with their contexts, that being sort of an open, a colder climate with an open landscape at the time of death.
00:40:07
Speaker
However, it's the microfauna, predominantly the amphibians and the reptiles, but also some rodents and insectivores that helped with shaping the paleo-environmental reconstruction for this site. The rodents and insectivores, which were mainly deposits from local birds of prey, are potentially collected by hyenas as well, give an idea of the surrounding climate based on species representation.
00:40:30
Speaker
So several species, such as the narrow-skulled bull, never heard of that bull before, Microtus steno crannus grigalis, steno crannus narrow-skull, makes sense, are all mainly sort of adapted to cold environments. However, just to spice it up, there are also species from more temperate climates, such as the common bent-winged bat, Miniopterus cheibersi.
00:40:55
Speaker
So at such, it's possible the surrounding environment was cold, but not too cold. Which is actually like a really cool thing to be able to figure out, to be honest. Like you could probably, I don't think the paper really went this far. Cause I think it kind of gets a bit fanciful if you try to go this far, but I feel like you could probably almost get it down to like actual degrees, you know?
00:41:23
Speaker
you probably are with certain species. I mean, I don't know much about bat biology. Yeah, because one thing that they've looked at as well is the taphonomy. So unsurprisingly, taphonomic analysis was also handy in determining sort of the broader identity of the site, due to the amount of nore marks found on the prey remains. So interestingly, using modern day comparative materials, potential differentiation could be made between adult and juvenile hyena noring.
00:41:53
Speaker
giving them further evidence to the notion that it was a den for both young and old individuals. That, you know, and alongside analysis of the situous Haida teeth, they were also found sort of in stratified context. I'm also very interested in that, being able to identify between adult and juvenile law. Like, I can imagine how that works in
00:42:16
Speaker
Like a theoretical kind of thing, but I don't like all the knowing I ever find is pretty, you know, not the best preserved and you're basically lucky enough to be like, well, that's X species, you know.
00:42:31
Speaker
because I guess it'll depend on the gnawing because if you just get sort of the pitting but then again like I'm not very well versed in hyena patterns because I mean I wish but I guess aside from the normal pitting you know with hyenas actually sort of chewing and crushing bones because they do have quite the jaw power I guess depending on sort of the shape of the breakages and like if any sort of tooth impressions are left you may be able to reconstruct whether they were
00:42:57
Speaker
you know, based on tooth position, whether it would have been like, this deciduous teeth doing that, when normally, you know, like in a lot of animals, so they're sort of deciduous for three molar tends to be sort of very similar to a molar because they're kind of using it as one while their molars actually erupt. That's my uneducated opinion. It's a nitty gritty, though. That's a, you know,
00:43:19
Speaker
pun intended, but it is like the nitty gritty of kind of how we do paleo-environmental reconstruction. It's the little tiny things that add up to, you know, maybe doesn't mean that seem like an important detail, but knowing, say, that you had adult and juvenile hyena living in this den kind of gives you a better idea of the identity of this site, which then puts it into a broader context, which is where the environment is. And we find out a bit more about that when we bring
00:43:49
Speaker
archaeo, or I guess in this case, paleobotany into the mix. So pollen was taken from sediment samples, from moss and from coprolite samples from very similar stratigraphic layers. So they're all roughly from a similar kind of time period. And it identified flora samples, including pine trees.
00:44:20
Speaker
So you could have done that one. No, you have to do it. Plants from the Artemisia genus and plants from the Plantago genus. So all this pollen from these various plants suggests, again, a very cold but also a very dry climate.
00:44:38
Speaker
And to kind of wrap it all up, there was also some geoarchaeology done. And I don't think we've ever talked about geoarchaeology on this podcast. I had very new friends who did my master's with me, who mostly did geoarchaeology. And again, I don't know if it's real. It seems like magic to do anything with rocks and
00:45:03
Speaker
So deep sea core data was taken from the Bay Biscay to provide further context of the surrounding region. So even we're broadening our analysis even further using marine isotope and pollen analyses.
00:45:23
Speaker
Although more diverse assemblage of flower species was determined from this core data, ultimately it again showcased a similar surrounding environment that was mainly cold and mainly dry. But not too cold. But not too cold, obviously.
00:45:39
Speaker
Basically, evidence from across these various different approaches suggested that we have a hyena done located in a cold and dry environment with an open landscape.
Wrap-Up: Archaeological Methods and Past Environments
00:45:50
Speaker
Although it was a cold environment, it was warmer than what's been observed in sites further up north. So both the fauna and flora species are compatible to those found in Central European steppe environments.
00:46:04
Speaker
Overall, that suggests that we are looking at the development of a step environment in this region at this time. So yeah.
00:46:13
Speaker
Bit of a long way to get to this, but I figured this case study was a good way to show how serology, you can take so much information from that, but it's also just one part, but a valuable part and a very useful part of a much larger complex method of archaeological application within paleo-environmental reconstruction. It's basically all these different elements kind of agreeing with each other and that helps the interpretation.
00:46:39
Speaker
And, you know, you could say that about all of archaeology, to be honest. The archaeology helps with the humor remains, which helps with the artifacts and so on and so forth. And even those people who, for some reason, want to do landscape and, you know, building archaeology. I don't get that, but you do you. But we all help each other at the end of the day. That's a positive note. Like little pieces of the puzzle together form the big, big puzzle that is archaeology.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yay, we did it. That's the most positive you'll hear from me on this podcast, I think. Anyway, as always, you can find us online at the Archeology Podcast Network websites where you can listen to our podcasts or where we get your podcasts where I assume
00:47:28
Speaker
most of you are listening to. But while you're listening to us, make sure you subscribe or follow our show, as well as give us a review. Tell your friends about us. You know, all the other stuff that you do if you're social and have friends. I wouldn't know. And we're also on Twitter at Archeo Animals. Let us know how you feel about these episodes. Do you want us to do more? Do you like secret miniseries? Were you just so surprised about this miniseries that you just kind of toppled over and didn't hear the whole episode? I don't know.
00:47:59
Speaker
Simone, this is not that funny. But that's it from us, folks. As always, I'm Alex Fitzpatrick. It's a lot of fun out here. We'll see you next time. Bye.
00:48:18
Speaker
Thank you for listening to RQ Animals. Please subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. You can find us on Twitter at RQAnimals. Also, the views expressed on the podcast are those of ourselves, the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of our institutions, employers, and the uphill of your podcast network. Thanks for listening.
00:48:43
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Laura Johnson. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.